Tag Archives: Writing Tools

Writing Prompt: Turn On Your Telly!

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It’s always good to have a few reliable writing prompts up your sleeve. The best are flexible and new every time you try them – something you can use over and over again. Here’s one such writing prompt that you can retry as many times as you like:

Turn on your TV

Your idiot box may not be so stupid! Turn on the telly and write down the first sentence (or partial sentence) that you hear and use this line as inspiration for a story or poem.

The great thing about this writing prompt is that if you want to give it another go, just turn the TV off and flick back on again. Change the channel or flick on at different times of day for new lines and new prompts.

If none of the first lines you hear inspire you, watch any program for a few minutes and keep an ear out for any interesting dialogue. Choose something that grabs you, and go with it.

Hazard Warning

Keep in mind the reason for switching on the box, and don’t get bogged down or distracted watching the latest rerun of an old drama, soap or quiz show. Stay focused, keep your attention on finding that writing prompt, perhaps with pen and paper in hand, so that you remember to press the off switch as soon as you’ve got one.

Happy writing!

Via: https://https://writersedit.com/1677/resources-for-writers

Literary Devices: Motifs, Symbols and Themes

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literary-devices-motif

Have you ever been reading a story, only to be struck with déjà vu? Perhaps you noticed that roses had just been mentioned for the tenth time. Or daffodils. Or the colour purple. Perhaps you found yourself wondering, ‘Why on earth is this author so obsessed with pineapples?’ But what is it you are really noticing? What are these recurring symbols and images? It may seem like you’ve discovered a strange fetish of the writer, but what you have more likely stumbled upon are motifs.

Just like any other literary device, writers can use motifs to add depth, convey meaning, and/or shape the way a reader receives, responds to, or understands a text. However, before using any literary device, you should first make sure you are familiar with how it works. So, here are the things you may need to know about ‘motif’, before using it in stories of your own.

What is a ‘Motif’?

In literature, a motif can be defined as any recurring image, object, idea, or element within a particular work. However, this definition is not entirely complete. After all, a motif should never be meaningless. In fact, a motif should contribute some form of symbolic significance to the story. For instance, a motif may be used to establish mood and atmosphere, or to reinforce/further explore the overriding themes of a story.

Motif vs. Symbol

As motifs are often symbolic in nature, they can often be mistakenly identified as mere symbols. However, it is important to remember that these two literary devices are not one and the same. So what is the difference between the two? The key difference to note between motifs and symbols is the element of repetition. As we’ve already established, a motif is an item that reoccurs throughout a text. In contrast, a symbol may only appear once. Beyond this, a motif often contributes toward developing the themes of a text, whereas a symbol’s significance may be limited to the particular scene. In this way, a motif may be a symbol, but a symbol is not necessarily a motif.

Motif vs. Theme

Another element ‘motif’ can often be mistaken for is ‘theme’. This is no doubt due to the fact that motif and theme are so closely connected. While a theme can be defined as a key or central idea explored throughout a text, a motif is more a means of embellishing, examining, or reinforcing these central ideas. For instance, a text may examine themes of good versus evil through the repeated images, or ‘motifs’, of light and dark.

Examples of Motif from a Literary Master

The best way to understand any literary device is to study examples of them in action. To better understand ‘motif’ and its relationship with ‘symbol’ and ‘theme’, let’s turn to a literary master, Mr. Edgar Allan Poe. The Fall of the House of Usher is rich with examples of motif. For example, the idea of certain things passing from one state to another is constantly repeated throughout the story. The word “pass” or “passed”, for instance, can be found on no less than seven occasions. On top of this, the very name ‘Usher’ (as in Roderick Usher) is associated with someone who directs us from one place to another. In this way, we can see a motif emerging, relating to the idea of transition.

This motif is also contributing to an overlaying theme – a theme of crossing, or transcending boundaries (particularly those between life and death). Madeline Usher, for example, is portrayed as crossing the boundary between life and death, when she emerges, alive, from her tomb. This theme is further enforced by the motif of decay. From the description of the partially “crumbling” house, and the “decayed trees”, to the description of Roderick Usher, possessing a “cadaverousness of complexion”, the notion of death and decay is clearly repeated throughout. As the very process of decay is itself a transitional state – one from pristine to ruin, we can see how this motif works to symbolise and reinforce the overall theme of crossing the boundary between life and death.

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So now you know more about motif, symbols and themes, try identifying some of your own. The next time you read a novel, take note of the images and elements that reoccur. See how they are used, and what they symbolise. Then get writing, and practice using motifs of your own.

Via: http://writersedit.com/literary-devices-motif/

Writing Prompts: Write a Movie Scene

Posted in Blog, Inspiration, Writing by

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When I’m on a roll, writing is like watching a movie in my mind’s eye and all I have to do is jot down the details. It doesn’t happen often, but when it does I have to try and make it last as long as I can. It’s easy because it’s all right there in front of me: the setting, characters, dialogue, imagery.

This writing prompt takes this amazing writing sensation literally. Instead of writing from your imagination you’ll be writing from something that’s already been created. This exercise plays with the idea of interpretation and representation, getting you to approach writing in a new way.

Write from a movie

Think of one of your favourite movies and pick a scene that you love. It can be a moment that’s very quiet but loaded with emotion, something that’s action packed – anything that takes your fancy. You don’t have to watch the scene again, but you can if you want to.Now write the scene as if it were a piece of prose. Don’t worry about the fact that the scene and characters you’re writing aren’t ‘yours’ – this is just exploration and fun for yourself, not for overt plagiarism or publication. Here are some things to take into account:

  • Creative descriptions of the visual surroundings and characters.
  • Translating dialogue from the aural to the written word.
  • Characters internal thoughts (this is where you can get imaginative).

When you’re done turning your movie scene into a prose piece, try turning it into a poem. Take the narrative and the descriptions and cut them down to their barest forms (yes, this means killing your darlings) and play with line breaks and structure. Even if you’re ‘not a poet’, have a go anyway; broadening your writing horizons is great for keeping your creativity fresh.

This writing prompt is a bit of fun to get you thinking about texts in new ways, considering how to manipulate them into different forms and seeing how you can accurately write what you see (whether you’re seeing it in real life, in a play or film, or in your mind).

Happy writing!

Via: https://writersedit.com/weekly-writing-prompts-28/

Literary Devices: How To Master Flashback

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Flashback

This week Writer’s Blog will be exploring literary devices to help you along with your writing. Literary devices are techniques and structures writers employ to convey their message and story. When done well, the use of literary devices can alter, manipulate and challenge the way a reader perceives any work. Used masterfully, literary devices influence how a story or essay can be interpreted and analysed, as well as how much the reader enjoys the work. Today’s device is Flashback:

How To Master Flashback

A flashback involves (as the name describes) a scene that moves from the present to the past to reveal something about a character or event within the narrative. Generally in fiction, the use of a flashback constitutes using white space to separate the past from the present, to signal to the reader that there has been a change in time and/or place. In some cases, a writer may choose to use italics (usually if the scene is more of a memory snippet than an actual fully-developed scene, as lots of italicized text irritates some readers and editors).

The best flashbacks are set up by the previous paragraph. In the lead up to the flashback, there is generally a ‘trigger’ – something that causes the protagonist/narrator to recall a particular event or detail of the past. The trigger is explored/explained in the flashback itself which then also reveals new information to the reader.

Flashbacks are an opportunity for the author to provide insight into situations that would otherwise be left unexplained…

Used in short stories, poems, novels, plays and movies, it is one of the most common and most recognisable writing techniques, and when executed well, one of the most effective.

Examples:

  • The Road (film): The director has used flashbacks throughout the whole film to reveal to the viewer how in a post-apocalyptic world, a father and son came to be on the road, homeless and unprotected.
  • Breaking Bad (television series): This series is renowned for doing things differently, and the use of flashback here is no exception. In Breaking Bad, the flashbacks often come first and are then later explained and explored in the next few episodes, setting up a sense of intrigue within its viewers.
  • Harry Potter (book series): Yes, even the Harry Potter novels use flashback. Remember the Pensieve that Dumbledore uses? The reader (and Harry) are transported back in time to relive the memories of Dumbledore and others.

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Tips for Using Flashbacks:

  • Use a trigger to justify taking the reader back into the past. This is the most natural way to introduce scenes from the past as this is actually how we recall memories in real life – we see something that reminds us of an event, person or detail that occurred in the past.
  • Also ensure that you use another trigger or event to bring your character (and reader) back to the present. This gives your reader clear signals as to when you are changing from past to present and present to past, in order to keep them immersed in the story, but not disorientated and confused.
  • Think of these triggers as ‘bookends’ to your flashback – they need to be there to keep this scene neat and tidy, but also shouldn’t stand out like a sore thumb (excuse the cliche).
  • Don’t overdo it. Don’t litter your narrative with multiple flashbacks, this becomes irritating and confusing for the reader, but also questions the validity of you setting your story in the present when more is actually happening in the past… If you find you are doing this often, you might want to have a think about changing when you set your story.
  • Ensure that each flashback contributes to your story in someway or another, whether it reveals something about a particular event, builds upon your characterization of the protagonist or sets up something for further down the track in the narrative – it has to propel the story forward, even though you’re looking back.

For some fantastic tips for writing successful flashbacks, check out this article at Writer’s Digest.

Via: https://writersedit.com/literary-devices-flashback

Literary Devices: How To Master Dialogue

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Dialogue-cropped

This week Writer’s Blog will be exploring literary devices to help you along with your writing. Literary devices are techniques and structures writers employ to convey their message and story. When done well, the use of literary devices can alter, manipulate and challenge the way a reader perceives any work. Used masterfully, literary devices influence how a story or essay can be interpreted and analysed, as well as how much the reader enjoys the work. Today’s device is Dialogue:

How To Master Dialogue

What is dialogue?

“Dialogue is not just quotation. It is grimaces, pauses, adjustments of blouse buttons, doodles on a napkin, and crossings of legs.” – Jerome Stern, Making Shapely Fiction

Not all of the following are used together, however, dialogue consists of four main elements:

  • Spoken words – the direct speech or the words within the quote marks.
  • Speech tags – the words that tell the reader who is speaking and how they are speaking.
  • Actions of the speaker – a description of the speaking character’s actions before, during and after speech.
  • Thoughts or emotional state of the speaker – a description of the speaking character’s emotional state before, during and after speech.

When characters start talking to each other, the story comes to life. A reader can gain a far deeper understanding of a character through their words and actions than they can from the narrative text. A couple of sentences of dialogue can reveal much about the background of a particular character. Are they wealthy or poor? What is their country of origin? Have they been well-educated? Are they feeling happy or sad? All of these questions can be answered with effective dialogue.

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What should dialogue do?

  • Reveal emotions
  • Draw the reader into the characters’ lives
  • Show the reader how the character reacts to different situations, such as pressure, intimacy, hate, love or fear
  • Move the story forward – every piece of dialogue should have a purpose
  • Hint at or tell of coming events
  • Give balance to a story after a long section of narrative
  • Increase the pace of the story
  • Contribute humour
  • Reflect the changes in emotions and lifestyle of your characters

What should dialogue not do?

  • Summarise action that could otherwise be exciting
  • Force-feed information to the reader – tell a character something they would already know, purely to fill in background to the reader
  • Act as padding to achieve a word count
  • Ramble on without the characters learning anything knew or achieving something
  • Sound exactly like real speech, with interruptions, rambling, repetitions and stutters, although these have their place

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Tips for Writing Dialogue

Remember, most people speak quite simply. If you dress up a character’s speech too much it will sound unrealistic.

“If you are using dialogue, say it aloud as you write it. Only then will it have the sound of speech.” – John Steinbeck

Better yet, grab a few friends and act it out, taking note of the speech tags and the actions of the speaker. This can be very entertaining and you’ll be able to see very quickly where your dialogue falls down.

Now over to you.

Via: https://writersedit.com/literary-devices-dialogue

Literary Devices: How To Master Prologue

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Prologue

This week Writer’s Blog will be exploring literary devices to help you along with your writing. Literary devices are techniques and structures writers employ to convey their message and story. When done well, the use of literary devices can alter, manipulate and challenge the way a reader perceives any work. Used masterfully, literary devices influence how a story or essay can be interpreted and analysed, as well as how much the reader enjoys the work. Today’s device is Prologue:

How To Master Prologue

“What’s past is prologue” – William Shakespeare

This comes from Shakespeare’s play, The Tempest, spoken by the character Antonio who suggests that the events of the past set the stage for the present. The quote is engraved on the National Archives Building in Washington, DC, which houses the most important of the United States’ historical documents. But in a literary work, while the prologue itself precedes the beginning of the story, it can contain events of the past or the future.

What is a prologue?

The prologue serves as an introduction, giving readers important information from the past or the future about the text that follows. It may establish the setting, introduce the characters or indicate a theme or moral in the story. Generally, the prologue is short and will only cover one or two pages. Most prologues are written by the author of the work.

A prologue can foreshadow events and conflict in a way that beginning in the middle of the action can’t. It is used when material that you want to include in the opening is out of time sequence with the rest of the story, giving readers information that is otherwise unobtainable within the normal structure of the novel. A prologue must also be a vital part of the whole text, not just added on before the opening chapter for no reason.

The Redwall Series

Popular children’s author Brian Jacques used both a prologue and an epilogue to frame each story in his Redwall series. Jacques uses the prologue effectively to establish the setting and introduce readers to minor characters with a meaningful story to tell. In these opening scenes, the dialogue between the characters is intended to draw the reader in, as much as it does to the characters who are listening in the story.

The Noon Lady of Towitta

In Patricia Sumerling’s mystery, The Noon Lady of Towitta, the unusually long prologue describes the events leading to the arrival of the police on the farm at Towitta, an isolated town in the Flinders Ranges of South Australia. The prologue is straight-forward and written in third person. The story that follows is told from the first person perspective of Mary Schippan, the lady suspected of murdering her younger sister. Mary Schippan could not have given readers a clear picture of the events preceding the police investigation as she was not present, so the author chooses to employ a prologue. Without it, readers don’t have the necessary background required to understand the story and so obtain it outside of the first person structure of Mary’s narrative.

The Da Vinci Code

In Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code, the prologue is employed firstly to establish the plot and setting of the book. Opening at the Louvre Museum in Paris, readers are presented with an event at a specific time and place around which the entire novel is plotted. Jacques Sauniere, the curator of the museum, is shot by a mysterious man and must use his dying breaths to keep his secret alive.

“A collection of the world’s most famous paintings seemed to smile down on him like old friends.” – Dan Brown, The Da Vinci Code

The prologue also establishes a significant theme throughout the novel – the importance of art. As he bleeds to death, Sauniere is surrounded by many famous artworks, one of which, we can assume, is Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, a painting that plays a critical role in the author’s plot.

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Writing an effective prologue

The most important feature of a prologue, like any literary device, is that it serves a purpose. Check to see if your prologue is doing a job. Does it establish the setting? Does it introduce characters, or a theme, or a moral? What does it add to the whole work? If it doesn’t have a clear purpose, you don’t need it.

Tip: Read prologues written by your favourite authors

Search for prologues written by the authors on your bookshelf. They’ve been published, so you can assume that the prologue is well written and employed. Look at the length and the style of the writing. The more prologues you read, the better you will understand when and how to use them effectively, if at all.

Tip: Practice writing first lines

Essentially, if you’re using a prologue, you are starting your book twice so you’ll need two great opening lines.  It can be useful to practise writing clever opening lines, enticing the reader to continue. If you’re already working on something, ask yourself if the first line is the best it can be. Shuffle the words around. Try a selection of synonyms. Work with it and keep practising.

Tip: Write a prologue for a book that doesn’t have one

Choose a novel without a prologue and consider how one could be used. Try to find something in the text to link with your prologue – a theme, the setting, or even some additional background information. Be creative! You could give a character a secret that affects how they respond to events in the story. Don’t feel discouraged if you find that your new prologue doesn’t work – this just means that you are improving your ability to detect ineffective use of the device.

Via: https://writersedit.com/literary-devices-prologue